Chapter 30
“How on earth did you two become friends?”
“Hmm, now that you mention it... Jihye, do you remember?”
“Don’t tell me you forgot...?”
“Aaaah, Jihye, don’t sulk! I’m sorry!”
Han Seori and Ma Jihye were a famous duo at Sefiron Academy.
From the moment they arrived at school until they went home, they did everything together. Even though they bickered every day, they were such close friends that no one had ever seen them truly fight.
Sefiron Academy’s problem child, Han Seori.
Even at an academy filled with foreigners and people of mixed heritage, she possessed an especially distinctive beauty. No one at the academy was unaware of the blond hair she had inherited from her Swedish mother or her limpid blue eyes that seemed capable of drawing anyone who looked into them.
Han Seori was involved in a considerable share of the numerous incidents that occurred at the academy every year, so she was always included on the teachers’ list of students to watch.
Yet despite her mischievous nature, she was surprisingly one of the top ten first-years academically, as well as a model student blessed with both outstanding magical talent and intelligence.
And then there was her best friend, Ma Jihye.
Jihye had been born and raised in Korea, where the very concept of noble families did not exist. She was the daughter of an ordinary middle-class family with no connections to famous clans or powerful chaebol families.
In some ways, it was difficult to find anyone with fewer things in common with Han Seori.
While Seori was sociable and lively, Jihye was quiet and somewhat timid.
Most of the conversations she had at school were with Seori.
With her neatly cut short black hair and cute glasses, she was the typical bookworm who could be found in just about every class. Yet unlike Han Seori, she surprisingly did not seem confident in her studies.
As a result, her grades were an ordinary middle-of-the-pack.
But there was one subject in which she was confident.
[Is that a first-year? She really beat a third-year with martial arts!]
It was aura-based martial arts sparring.
Her father was a detective working in the Seoul Major Crimes Investigation Unit 2.
He had taught her martial arts from a young age because he wanted to raise his frail, delicate daughter to be strong. Perhaps he had underestimated her talent too much.
By now, when it came to using aura, Jihye’s talent was unrivaled among her peers, to the point that no one her age could stand against her.
It was hardly surprising that, after the athletic meet, a rumor spread among the first-years that anyone who spotted a girl with blood-red eyes should run away the moment they saw her.
Jihye had struggled to adapt to the academy, so she was naturally drawn to Seori, who had become the center of the class. Seori, in turn, was won over by Jihye’s serious yet unexpectedly impressive side.
Their friendship had probably truly begun at the athletic meet, but they had already been drawn to one another before then.
It was an ordinary walk home.
Wanting to cheer up Seori after the transfer student had ignored her, Jihye suggested that they go play at the playground together.
But then they picked a fight with some upperclassmen who were bullying a child who had not even started elementary school yet.
Seori had thought she could take on a fight as long as Jihye was with her, even if their conversation went awry. But she had never imagined that Jihye would charge in so recklessly.
“No, Jihye! Look behind you!”
Jihye was in danger.
Her body froze, and she could not move.
Jihye still seemed unaware of the threat approaching her.
If that wooden club hit her head wrong, then...
“Cast: Adjust Friction Coefficient”
Seori detected a strange flow of mana behind her.
[4th-Circle Joint Cast: Adjust Gravitational Coefficient]
Seori realized that its source was the mysterious transfer student they had met at the school’s back gate earlier.
Without moving a finger, she created two magic circles and one counter-combination array.
So much mana flowed toward her that the hair in her pigtails whipped about without pause.
[Write: Rotational Transformation]
The child who had tried to strike Jihye from behind slipped, and the other four ended up stuck flat against the ground.
When Name subdued the upperclassmen in an instant, not only Seori but even Jihye, who had been at the center of the fight, needed a moment to understand what was happening.
“Are you all right?”
Name helped the little girl, who was still lying on the ground, to her feet.
The girl must have scraped her knee against a sharp stone when she fell, because a small smear of blood had spread across her leg.
“Y-yes...”
“You’re tough. It must hurt, but you’re not even crying. Are you going to keep playing at the playground?”
“No... I want to go home.”
“Do you think you can walk?”
“Ow, it hurts...!”
The girl was only now checking her own injury.
Her eyes began to well up with tears again.
“Close your eyes for a moment. I’ll heal you right away.”
Name reassured the girl and sat her down on a bench.
[2nd-Circle Cast: Tissue Regeneration]
“It might sting a little.”
“Eek!”
“It’ll feel better soon.”
A bright green light shimmered in Name’s hand.
What she was about to use was the wound-healing magic commonly used by healers.
It increased the hypoxia tolerance of the NK cells in a specific area, removing viruses that had entered the wound and promoting the growth of blood vessels.
It also stimulated the mitochondrial metabolism of macrophages, alleviated inflammation, and rebuilt the tissue.
Whether that saint with nothing but an absurdly large chest had known all this when she used the spell, or had cast it by instinct, remained an unsolved mystery to Name.
“What’s your name?”
“I’m Laura. Aurora.”
“That’s a pretty name.”
“What’s your name, big sister?”
“I’m Noname. There, all done. Look—it’s completely healed, right?”
“Huh? Woooow.”
When Name moved both hands away, the girl marveled at her neatly healed knee.
“It doesn’t hurt at all! I can walk home by myself!”
“You haven’t recovered your strength yet. I’ll take you home.”
Aurora said that she lived in Guryong Village across the main road.
“All right, let’s go.”
“Um... Transfer student?”
While Aurora carefully held Name’s hand, Seori and Jihye called out to Name and stopped them.
“Thanks for saving us. Jihye almost got hurt because of me...”
Seori hesitated.
But Seori’s awkwardness did not seem to bother Name all that much.
“You two were brave too, though also kind of reckless.”
When Name awkwardly praised them, Seori’s expression brightened.
“Thank you for saving us too, big sisters...!”
“You said your name was Aurora, right? It’s so nice to meet you! My name is Han Seori, and the big sister who was fighting five against one here is Ma Jihye!”
“What do you mean, five against one? Don’t make it sound so embarrassing.”
“No, it was awesome!”
“Listen to her! Our Laura is so cute! Do you want to be my little sister?”
Seori and Jihye quickly became friends with Laura too.
Even after they left the playground and reached the main road, the girls’ chatter never stopped.
“Laura, did you see the transfer student’s magic earlier? Five upperclassmen went ‘Aaaagh!’ and collapsed in an instant.”
“I did...! Name unni is really strong...!”
“I didn’t even sense anyone casting magic in this direction. How did she do it...?”
Jihye agreed with Seori.
The spell had been activated in the blink of an eye.
They instinctively understood that it was far beyond the level someone in their grade should have been capable of casting.
But Name was embarrassed by their unconditional praise.
“Why are you following me? Aren’t you going home?”
“That’s a hurtful thing to say! We definitely helped Laura too! You said it yourself. So that means we can take Laura home too.”
Once they crossed the intersection, the scenery changed 180 degrees.
The high-rise buildings and beautifully landscaped streets had vanished without a trace, replaced by utility poles that looked as though they might have found use fifty or a hundred years ago, still standing here and there.
Flyers from illegal debt-collection agencies proclaiming ‘We Find Your Missing Money’ were scattered across the streets.
Name found the scenery strangely familiar.
A very old memory surfaced in Name’s mind: a boy who could not walk. He lived in a semi-basement, a bottomless abyss where not even a shred of hope could be found.
Laura’s current situation looked exactly like his.
Seori, on the other hand, found the scenery itself fascinating.
She could not show her reaction too openly in case she hurt Laura’s feelings, but she had never imagined that Seoul still had a slum like this, especially right beside an apartment complex.
The flimsy house had no security devices to speak of.
Laura lived in one of those houses.
“Thank you for walking me home.”
“Is no one home? What about your mother?”
Jihye asked with concern.
“My grandma’s in her room, and my mom doesn’t come home very often... She says that if I wait at the playground, I’ll get to see my dad someday... but I think she’s just lying.”
Name realized that Laura’s family, too, was entangled in some complicated circumstances.
Everyone in the world lives with their own pain.
But the degree to which people feel that pain differs from person to person.
One person fails an exam they prepared for over a year, despairs, drinks with friends at a bar to let off steam, and promises to try again next time. Another is crushed by the final challenge of their life and spends the rest of it forgetting their dream.
Because they have to eat and survive right now,
they throw away even the passion remaining in one corner of their hearts.
Name’s heart still ached whenever she saw children like Laura.
“I should come visit more often.”
Seori muttered out of nowhere.
“Laura?”
“Yeah. It’d be fun if we all played together, right?”
Yet the ember of hope can flare up in the most unexpected moments.
Name smiled at their words and silently prayed that Laura would continue meeting only good people like them.
“By the way, Name... do you live in Parthenon Apartments too?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow, which building? I’m in Building 101.”
“...Building 102.”
“That’s right next door! We’re neighbors, then. Take care of me, hehe. From now on, I can go to school with Jihye and Name. Jihye’s house is in that complex over there, so we take the same route!”
Jihye nodded along.
“We’ll see... You can only say that if I pass the transfer exam.”
“What do you mean?”
“No matter how I think about it, I feel like I’m going to fail the academy entrance exam.”
“Why? If you weren’t qualified to attend the academy, we should have been expelled a long time ago.”
“Seori’s right. Even if we told Sihu from our class to do what you did today, he wouldn’t have been able to imitate it.”
But the expressions and gazes of the admissions officers Name had seen last were nothing but negative.
“Then let’s see each other at the entrance ceremony if you get accepted! You have to go to and from school with us then, okay?”
“Thank you so much for today! I’ll never forget it!”
They really were such willful children.
Yet Name could not bring herself to dislike their innocence.
Seori and Jihye saw Name off until she rode the elevator up.
Only after they had disappeared did Name recall, one by one, the breathless events that had unfolded over the past month.
[39th floor. Going up.]
In this life, she had taken the final exam for her magic theory course, one of the few pleasures in her life.
[5th floor]
She had taken public transportation to Hanguk University to check her grades, then been hospitalized after suffering a seizure because she had not taken her potion.
[10th floor]
Before she knew it, she had been adopted by Professor Cheon Gyu-jin. Every day, she ate warm meals and discussed the latest magical theories with him in the evenings.
[15th floor]
To pay off the debt from a bill that had arrived late from the Korea Magical Power Corporation, she had done a week of joint broadcasts with Sia.
[20th floor]
She had also visited the columbarium again with Professor Cheon to see her precious mother, Seol-ah.
[25th floor]
In the end, despite trying to pay off the debt in secret, Professor Cheon had found out because of Sia’s texting mistake. It had, however, given her the opportunity to get a debit card in her own name.
[30th floor]
After being recommended for admission to Sefiron Academy, she had once again spent two weeks diligently preparing for the interview.
[35th floor]
And today, she had met some rather unusual but kind academy friends, as well as a little girl with a cute smile.
[39th floor.]
In the end, after going around and around,
“I’m home.”
she had arrived at a place she could call home.
“Oh my, Name’s home! You took a while. Don’t tell me the interview only just ended?”
“No, I met some interesting friends on the way.”
“Friends? You’ve already made friends?”
It had taken a long time,
so now she could rest a little.
“Yes, they were nice kids.”